Betsy Graseck
Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Okay. Up next, we have State Street, and we're delighted to have with us today, John Woods, CFO of State Street. John, welcome back to the conference.

John Woods
Executive VP & CFO

Great to be here.

Betsy Graseck
Morgan Stanley, Research Division

All right. John, let's start with the operating environment and talk about how you see the overall environment today versus what you expected maybe heading into the year and maybe even as you got past 1Q earnings.

John Woods
Executive VP & CFO

Yes, sure. It's been -- I mean it's been pretty constructive. I mean when we go back to what we were thinking about in April, we had the equity markets being basically flat to year-end in terms of how we were -- what our assumptions were in terms of driving our outlook for the year. And it's been a little bit of a wild ride, but we're still up, whatever, 6%, 7% year-to-date. So that equity tailwind is nice to have comparing and contrasting to where we were in April. Rates also a little bit of a U-turn from earlier in the year, at least, kind of we were talking about cuts and now hikes seem to be priced in, not just here but also in Europe where we have exposure.

And the whole volatility story or I guess, volatility of -- volatility, if you will, we had that large spike in the first quarter, and we had a view that, that was going to moderate throughout the rest of the year. And for most of this quarter, that's